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Last week’s Governance Now 2021 conference highlighted a lack of disabled voices on arts boards. Simon Tait reports.

Arts organisations are missing out by not recruiting disabled people to their boards for their intellectual abilities rather than their physical status.

This was Tom Shakespeare’s succinct message yesterday at the Governance Now 2021 conference organised by Clore Leadership and the Cultural Governance Alliance. And partly, he says, it’s because the disabled aren’t bothering to apply, thinking they won’t be taken seriously.
 
Shakespeare is one of the more resounding voices in the debate over disability in public life, particularly in the arts and culture. He is the professor of disability research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, he has achondroplasia - dwarfism - and uses a wheelchair. He is deputy chair of Light for the World, the charity devoted to improving health care systems in the world’s poorest regions...Keep reading on Tait Mail.